Submissions

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).

The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.

The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.

If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

The manuscript is a report of original educational research or a discussion article on research topics in education.

I have carefully proof read my paper and I am confident that the standard of English is acceptable.

I have searched my topic on Google Scholar.

Author Guidelines

AUTHOR GUIDELINESFiles should be in MS Word format only and should be formatted for direct printing. Figures and tables should be embedded and not supplied separately. Please make sure that, as far as possible, you use regular fonts in your documents. Special fonts, such as fonts used in the Far East (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.) may cause problems during processing. To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the ‘spellchecker’ function of MS Word (proofing language: English UK) and to have your work language edited by a professional English language practitioner. Please submit a letter from the practitioner verifying that your work has been professionally edited.

Article Structure Articles should be prepared in the following order:

Title: Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible. The title should not exceed 12 words and should be font size 16.

Abstract: The abstract is a meaningful summary or synopsis of the complete document, written in one paragraph (300 words). It should address all of the following elements: Purpose of the article, methods, results, conclusions, and recommendations / future directions (as applicable).

Abstract Writing Style• Use specific words, phrases, concepts, and keywords from your article.• Use precise, clear, descriptive language.• Write from an objective, rather than evaluative, point of view.• Define unique terms and acronyms the first time used.• Type in font size 8.• Use complete sentences.• Use verbs in the active voice• If the article reports quantitative findings, write in the third person, as traditionally done in quantitative studies. If the article reports qualitative findings, write in the first person, as traditionally done in qualitative studies.

Keywords: Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of five keywords. List these in alphabetical order and use font size 8. Use semi-colons between words.Key Elements of Article:

1. Introduction: This explains the nature and purpose of the article, the theoretical background relevant to the article’s focus, related research with a clear indication of the gap(s)/limitation(s) in existing knowledge / practice that the article will address, and the practical applications or significance of what the article reports.

2. Methods: This section names and justifies the research design; describes the participants/sample (e.g., contextualisation, demographics, recruitment/selection criteria, and group assignment), the data collection instruments/ data generation techniques (e.g., task[s] / method(s), equipment, instruments, including a discussion of their validity and reliability, if appropriate, or trustworthiness in qualitative studies), the procedures employed in the study such as treatment(s) or the data generation process, and data analysis. Authors must please align the language of this section with their design (i.e., quantitative and qualitative methods sections will use different research jargon). Authors must comment explicitly on how their work was ethical.

3. Results /Findings and Discussion: Results/findings should be clear and concise. The discussion should explore the significance of the results of the work, and not repeat them. Authors need to acknowledge their study’s limitations. A combined results and discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature in the discussion – instead use the literature to show how the results/findings are significant.

4. Conclusion(s) and Recommendations/Future directions: The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of the discussion, or results and discussion, section. Recommendations/Future directions may stand alone or form a subsection of the discussion or results and discussion section. These include meaningful suggestions for further research and/or practical applications flowing from the study’s conclusions.

Acknowledgements (when appropriate): Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title, or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., language editing, writing assistance, fieldwork, etc.) and sponsors.

References: References are listed in alphabetical order. Each listed reference is cited in text, and each text citation is listed in the References. References should be in line with APA 6 (American Psychological Association) style.

Appendices: If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on.

Key Elements for Discussion Articles: major theme, logical development of the theme, author's point of view, implications, inferences, or conclusions.

Key Elements for Systematic Reviews and/or Meta-syntheses: scope of the review, publication time span, publication origin, types of documents reviewed, author's opinion of the reviewed literature, particularly unique or important research findings, and conclusions about the research trends.

The body of the article (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and Recommendations, Acknowledgements and References) should be typed in Times New Roman, font size 12. Use 2.0 line spacing. The length of the article - including abstract, tables, and references -must be between 3500 and 6000 words. The article must be written in UK English and must be language edited by a professional English language practitioner prior to submission. Each paragraph should be longer than two sentences.

Write and structure articles according to APA 6 (American Psychological Association). Tables: All tables should be numbered with Arabic numerals. Headings should be placed above tables, and centred. Leave one line space between the heading and the table. Only horizontal lines should be used within a table, to distinguish the column headings from the body of the table. Tables must be embedded into the text and not supplied separately. Table contents should be typed in font size 10.

Illustrations: All figures should be numbered with Arabic numerals (1, 2, …n). All photographs, schemas, graphs and diagrams are to be referred to as figures. Line drawings should be good quality scans (minimum of 300 dpi) or true electronic output. Low-quality scans are not acceptable. Figures must be embedded into the text and not supplied separately.

Lettering and symbols should be clearly defined either in the caption or in a legend provided as part of the figure. Figures should be placed at the top or bottom of a column wherever possible, as close as possible to the first reference to them in the article. The figure number and caption should be typed below the illustration, left justified, with subsequent lines indented.

Equations: All equations should be numbered with Arabic numerals (1, 2 ...n).

Style and References

Please adhere to APA 6 (American Psychological Association) style in your article. Guidelines on how to do so can be accessed from the following link:http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01

Submission checklist

The following list will be useful during the final checking of your article, prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.

Ensure that the following items are present: A letter to the editor, specifying that the submission reflects original work that is not under review elsewhere and how the submission fits the journal’s scope and offers new knowledge. The letter should also include information regarding which one author has been designated as the corresponding author. Contact details for this author must be provided, including: • Affiliation (department/school; faculty; university; country)•Official E-mail address • Full postal address • Telephone and fax numbers All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain: • Title page (The full title of the manuscript, the name(s) of the author(s) together withtheir affiliations, and the name, address, and e-mail address of the author to whomcorrespondence should be sent, as well as date of submission/resubmission.)• Abstract and keywords • Main document• All figure captions • All tables (including title, description, footnotes) Further considerations • Manuscript has been professionally language edited • References are in the correct format (i.e., APA 6) for this journal • All references mentioned in the reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa • Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (SeeThe Effect of Open Access).